How many more chances for PG&E?
More catastrophic wildfires and other consequences of an overheated planet are already baked into our present and future, according to a new U.N. report, but we still have time to limit the damage with decisive measures. In California, one such precaution should be wholesale reform of a utility that can’t be counted on to stop setting fire to wildlands that are that much readier to burn.
After all but destroying the small Gold Rush town of Greenville and growing rapidly to nearly half a million acres over the past week, the Dixie Fire in the mountains of Butte and Plumas counties is now the state’s second largest on record. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has acknowledged that contact between one of its power lines and a fallen tree may have started the fire, which has burned hundreds of structures, forced the evacuation of thousands, and darkened skies over Northern California and beyond.
The company also reported that one of its lines may have started the smaller Fly Fire, which burned about 4,000 acres before becoming part of the Dixie Fire, suggesting PG&E could bear the blame for starting this fire twice. In addition to what is now one of the largest wildfires on record, PG&E was criminally convicted of responsibility for California’s most deadly and destructive such disaster, the Camp Fire, which burned near the origin of the Dixie Fire less than three years ago.
In addition to reigniting all too familiar doubts about the utility’s capacity to avoid starting fires in much the same way nearly every year since 2015, PG&E’s preliminary report on the Dixie Fire’s origins also raised questions about its response in the early hours and days of the blaze. More than half an hour elapsed between PG&E’s first record of flames and the beginning of the emergency fire response, and the company also took several days to file a report to regulators that appears to have been required within four hours.
Fortunately, the state has alternatives to a for-profit corporation that has repeatedly proved itself unable to deliver electricity safely. San Francisco recently revived its offer to buy its portion of PG&E’s distribution system, and regulators have begun a separate multi-step process that could lead to a takeover by a state-authorized public benefit corporation. After multiple bankruptcies, criminal convictions and a legislative rescue, it’s abundantly clear that state officials must accelerate such efforts to fundamentally change the ownership and management of the utility.
During a visit over the weekend to Greenville, the town leveled by the Dixie Fire, Gov. Gavin Newsom emphasized that “we need to acknowledge, just straight up, these are climate-induced wildfires.” It is obvious that a hotter, drier climate is making landscapes more vulnerable to wildfire in California, throughout the West and in many other places across the globe. That’s just one more reason to rein in a rogue corporation with a demonstrated propensity for sparking the destruction.